Paper: Quest for Baumgartner’s File Remains ‘Mired’ in Court

More than three years after the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) launched a probe of former Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner, the News Sentinel’s quest for his TBI file remains in limbo, the paper reports. After unsuccessfully seeking to obtain the file through the state courts, the paper learned it had been entered into evidence in Baumgartner’s federal trial. U.S. Magistrate Judge Clifford Shirley, in whose chambers a copy of the file has been kept, ordered Baumgartner’s defense to log the file into the court’s public electronic filing system, but agreed to keep it under seal until redactions are finalized. The paper says that a “slew of proposed redactions” have been filed and since those documents are classified, “it is not yet clear whether the [team is] seeking to simply remove personal identifying information of witnesses ... or entire sections of the investigative file itself.”